


let's sit on the couch and do nothing

by spacepuck



Series: The Under [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Sburb Session, Domestic, M/M, Parallel Universes, Post-Sburb, Time Travel, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-07
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-13 13:45:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7978828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacepuck/pseuds/spacepuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He speaks in your mind—“Should we watch <i>Prometheus</i> or <i>War of the Worlds?</i>”—but his voice isn’t fully there. It never is, when you try recalling it; there’s always something missing, the balance of breathiness and weight, the practiced work around his overbite, the motivation behind his thoughts that creates a flux in inflections that you could never replicate.</p><p>His voice is too close to yours when you try to remember it exactly. When you remember your response—“I know that the <i>Alien</i> franchise gets your dick wet, so I can’t knowingly deny a bro some solid fantasy material when I have such incriminating information floating around my frontal lobe”—it hardly sounds any different.</p><p>You feel your brows pinch at the realization. Slowly, you open your eyes.</p><p>“Hm,” the seer hums, “I don’t believe he can do it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	let's sit on the couch and do nothing

There is the couch, there is the television, there is the air conditioner clicking away in the far corner of the room, in need of a good smack to set it back to a quieter reverie but without a close enough or willing hand to pull through with the task. 

There is the couch, battered and blue and sinking from collected days and hours of yours and his weight collecting on its cushions. There is the carpet, tan and stained with the mysteries of past tenants, now ghosts—in your mind, ghosts living in record books stowed and hushed away in the landlord’s beat-up filing cabinet bought back in 1989; in his mind, ghosts that live on in the walls, mingling with the insulation and wiring, making the lights flicker whenever he makes eggs and toast in the late afternoon—the carpet, sinking in four distinct holes as the couch pulls closer and closer to touching the wood underneath the plush, but not quite making the journey.

There is the television providing white noise. 

There is him, slouched against the arm of the couch, dark-stubbled chin nestled into his palm as he stares on at the changing pictures, bright eyes intense and blue as ever despite the dull infomercial engagement. His lips move, and his words fall to you—

“Do you think if we got this pan set I could hit someone with it and send them through the ground Wile E. Coyote-style?”

—before falling away to the silent gnawing of his front teeth worrying his dried lip. 

And there you are. You, legs kicked up over his lap, poised to watch him directly while the television exists as a blur in your peripherals, responding,

“Are you worried about a break-in, or are you trying to hint at some resentful and violent feelings towards your best bro? Because I’m getting the fuck outta dodge if you’re planning on driving me thirteen stories down with some bullet-proof cooking utensils.”

He lands a hand on your ankle, shaking it idly as he tips his head back and forth in mock thought.

“Mm,” he hums, “I don’t know if they’re _bullet-proof_.”

You scoff a short laugh at him, and you watch a smile creep over the visible half of his face. 

The DVR tells you that it’s a dusty, neon-green three forty-six in the morning. 

You want nothing more than to believe that the time really doesn’t matter. 

He shifts his legs under yours slightly, bobbing his knees as a yawn creeps through and rattles his ribcage. When he pushes his glasses into his hair—mussed, recently washed, combed through with clumsy fingers—he tilts his head back to rest the nape of his neck against the curve of the couch’s back.

When he closes his eyes, you watch him scrub at them with the heels of his palms. 

He sometimes makes wishes on the dislodged eyelashes. You’ve seen him blow the near-invisible hairs off of his fingertips before murmuring under his breath, his back turned to you while you creeped around corners with silent footfalls. But you know he won’t tonight—not with you there, sober, watching him blank-faced and, for all he knows, unblinking. 

Some nights, you wonder what he wishes for.

It doesn’t matter, since it’s all bullshit, but you still wonder why he does it.

“Wh’ time is it?” he asks. His hands drop onto your ankles, head tilted back, eyes closed. 

“Three fifty,” you respond. You don’t even look at the numbers—you just know. “Time for us to get our nap on.”

You feel the soft bob of his stomach hitting your calves as he laughs breathily. “Nap? Dude, I want to sleep.”

“Napping counts as sleeping,” you say.

“Napping counts as being for fussy toddlers who don’t know better,” he volleys back. “Naptime is like a free trial for a full night’s sleep, except the full night’s sleep is _also_ free, making the free-trial of naptime totally pointless.”

“Okay, but the full night’s sleep is for members only, and, sorry to break the news, but we’re the repeat customers at Rite-Aid that always turn down joining the membership even though it would save us mad cash, and the only reason we turn it down is because we always get the same cashier and you’ve convinced yourself that it’s a plot to get us to join a cult.”

“I don’t trust her, Dave!”

“It’s a chain store, dude, and we’re there literally every day. Every single goddamn day, because _someone_ needs their daily fix of making their molars rot all the way through, because they imagine that getting root canal treatment is a total blast.” 

“They can take my money, but they can’t take my soul.” His fingers tap idly against the pronounced bump of your ankle. “Also, we’re always there because _you’re_ convinced your ten different hair products have been tampered with every three days.”

You bump his ribs with your kneecap, making a laugh bubble from him. 

“That’s because you’re always fucking with my shit. You’ve definitely put cum in my hair gel _at least_ once.”

“You can’t prove that!”

“I’ve got black lights out the ass, do you really want to play this game, man? Do you—”

He cuts you off with a snort. 

“More like up your ass,” he mutters.

“No, hell no, we’re not defecting from the John Egbert hair gel surprise, not this time, you slimy fucker—”

He slowly shoves your legs off of his lap, and despite your stubborn attempt to keep them planted and barred over him, he stands up, stretching his hands far above his head, revealing the tanned stripe of his stomach briefly before padding away to somewhere beyond your vision.

“Oh no, I’m slithering away,” he calls, “look at me, getting my slime all over the walls.”

“John,” you call back. When he doesn’t respond, you sit up on the couch with a grunt, planting one foot on the floor while tucking the other leg up to your chest. “John, come back—ectoplasmic dicks out where I can see ‘em.”

“Hell no,” he finally responds, muffled by a closed door.

“You’re not in a place to say no, you’ve committed a crime.” Slowly, you bring yourself to stand in the dark haze of the living room, lit only by the gentle flickering of the television. You watch your dim shadow stretch and jump on the opposite wall as you roll your neck. “You’re the prime suspect, Egbert my man, and I’m ready to dish some hard-found evidence in your smug face.”

He huffs a short “yeah, right” from somewhere in the apartment. You spot the short length of light in the otherwise dark hallway, interrupted by his footfalls blocking the doorway. When you jiggle the knob to the bathroom, you hear a cabinet shut, clearly meant for you to hear.

“John Egbert,” you scold.

“Dave Strider,” he says back, voice loud and clouded with a smirk as he presses himself up against his side of the door. 

“You better be takin’ a piss, or so help me god—”

“Oh, I’m doing _something_.”

You hear the obvious snap of a lid opening, and you try the knob again. 

“Don’t you dare,” you warn. “Egbert, I swear to god, if you’re going to jerk yourself into my stuff while I’m standing right here, I will personally go back in time to pause the sinking of the _Titanic_ , come back here to snatch your ass, and go _back_ and place you right on the deck next to the band, and I will zip back here without remorse that a hundred years ago, my best friend sank into the cold ugly hands of the Atlantic—”

He cuts you off with an overdramatic moan, and you push yourself away from the door. 

“Asshole,” you say, and you watch his footsteps jump away from the strip of light as you land a kick against the wood. He laughs.

“Wasn’t it the Arctic?” he asks slowly.

You kick the door again. “Nah, it was the Atlantic.”

He hums, and the noise wades into a chuckle, almost a squeal when you reach forward to jiggle the knob again. 

“Dave, I’m indecent!”

“Yeah, like always,” you respond. “I’m going to kick this door down in five seconds, and _you’re_ going to be the one to explain to Nancy why the doorframe’s broken.”

“Uh, no, I don’t want to talk to _Nancy_. She hates me!”

“Because you keep breaking the doorframes.” You give the door a small warning kick with your toes, and you almost smirk as you watch his footsteps jump back. “One—”

“Oh my god, dude, don’t.”

“Two—”

“She’s going to _kill_ me, just—”

You ready your leg, swinging it forward and back in preparation. “Three—”

“Just hold on, geez—”

“ _Four—_ ”

You hear the rapid shuffle of a tube falling into the sink basin, jeans rustling clumsily around familiar knobby knees and hips, a zipper getting caught before being pulled entirely up.

“Dave—”

“ _Five._ ”

You deliver the kick to the door, shutting your eyes to settle some of the impact, but feel your shoulders pinch when your foot meets nothing.

Instead, it falls forward, 

and the rest of your body follows involuntarily

d

r

o 

p

p

i

n

g

into nothing.

into nothing.

into nothing.

into nothing.

Your knees buckle when your feet finally settle again. The surface below you wobbles at your weight.

You hold your hands out in front of you, at first to sweep into the pitch black, then holding them directly in front of your face, almost afraid that they don’t exist anymore until you feel your fingers prodding at your cheeks, then upward, pushing your shades into your hair.

You try to look around.

The dark makes your eyes hurt. 

“John?” you call out. _“John?”_

The name carries into the far reaches of the dark, but doesn’t return to you as it would have in the small bathroom in your apartment. You swivel yourself around, looking every which way until you’ve become disoriented, until forward is a word slipping from your vocabulary. 

Some words, however, have remained with you:

_What the fuck._

_This fucking blows._

_Am I dying?_

_I’m dead._

_I’m not dead._

_What kind of stupid bullshit is this?_

_I’m dead, I’m definitely dead, I’m dead, I’m dead, I’m dead._

You scrub at your eyes with closed fists, trying to quell your sudden nausea, finding no relief at the bursts of stars forming behind your eyelids. When you open your eyes, you find that there’s no difference—you blink, blink again, until you’re unsure if your eyelids are present at all.

“John?”

The surface wobbles again as your knees buckle and stutter. 

If you listen hard enough, you think you can almost hear the waves travel slow and away.

You lower yourself to your knees and brace yourself against the thin ground, swallowing back bile as it rolls coldly under your hands, carefully from your palms to your fingertips and far beyond. Your heart thuds from your middle chest up into your throat; as your dip your head, you feel your sunglasses slip from your hair and fall. 

You palm at the surface, trying to grasp at them with your fingertips but unable to feel them out. This isn’t the dingy carpet you’ve crawled across in drunken stupor, the carpet you’ve swept over with hasty hands searching for the lost remote amidst a sea of dusty cheese puffs and cracked chips. No; this is something else, something cold, making your finger pads feel oily at first contact, only for you to pull back and find your skin just as dry as it had been before. It shifts constantly under the smallest movement, threatening to bring you along with the waves despite you focusing your dead weight into your spot. You hardly attempt to breathe too deeply. 

It’s when you slam a frustrated fist against the surface that you hear something that isn’t your blood in your ears: the familiar clatter of your shades, bumping ever so slightly, close and far away. Despite the floor rolling beneath you at the sudden beating, you do it again, and again, clutching as well as you can to the slick under as you listen to the plastic and metal scatter just under your hand, but somewhere far off.

Then, your breath catches when you hear something else.

“Dave?”

You pound at the surface once again, this time open-palmed, feeling the sting trail into your thumb and fingertips. 

“John?” you call. “John!”

“Dave? Where—”

The clatter of your shades has fallen more away than closer. You stop hitting the ground, instead pressing an ear to the slick surface, holding your breath to hear the warbled noise again.

“Dave?”

“John.”

His name falls from you as a breath. You swallow; hitting the ground again with a closed fist, you squeeze your eyes shut as the waves bob your head listlessly up and over, up and over. 

You expect to hear the clatter of your shades, to at least be given another chance at hearing the hazy voice on the other side, but instead there’s nothing. You slowly pull your face away from the surface to squint down at it.

There’s nothing to see.

You can feel your nose begin to run, the precursor to tears. You blink them away rapidly. 

_No_. _Fuck that. No tears, none of that shit._

You swipe a wrist under your nostrils with a sniff to ward the storm away. 

“Alright,” you breathe. “Alright. Where the hell am I?”

The soft words cause a small wave to roll under you again, catching your hands and releasing them before disappearing into what you can only hope are the far-off edges of this place. You close your eyes, trying to settle your panicked heart and upturned stomach.

When you open them again, you’re met with the slow-blink of violet eyes hovering in the nothing. 

You scramble back a touch—the eyes follow you nonetheless, large and disembodied, multiplying in gentle blinks across the dark expanse.

“Slipped.”

The voice comes like a breeze. 

“What?” you breathe.

“I believe,” the voice continues patiently, “that you slipped.”

Shakily, you bring yourself to your feet again. 

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re not where you belong.”

“Helpful,” you chide, despite the feeling of unease settling in your core—you almost prefer the total darkness over the eyes fully surrounding you. “Am I dead?”

A laugh erupts from above you, a chipper bubble that the violet eyes respond to with minuscule twitches. It’s a different voice—it makes the floor quake under you, making you crouch to hold your own again. 

“No, silly!” it says. “You just slipped!”

You huff out a short frustrated breath. “What, like, into a coma? Am I experiencing some limbo shit right now where the big man and the devil are duking it out to see who takes my soul?”

“No, no, no—you’re still awake _and_ alive, you’re just…”

“You’re not where you belong,” the violet eyes repeat, fixating on you again. “Much like trying to hold water in your palms, you’ve slipped away from above into the Witch’s hold.”

“You’re telling me that I’m dead,” you say. A lump forms in your throat as your heartbeat thrums. “Listen lady, I don’t need any beating-around-the-bush shit, alright? Just tell me straight that the earth had enough of me.”

You hate the quiver in your voice.

Still, the two voices seem to sigh—one a gentle heave, the other dramatic enough to make the surface ripple below your again. 

“Let me explain.” The eyes blink slowly, leaving you in a moment of darkness. “I can assure that you are not dead—this is not the underworld or the afterlife or what have you. It’s a little more complicated than that.”

“Lay it on me,” you force.

“Well,” she continues, “most beings stay above, where they belong, in both life and in death in physical form. To continue our water metaphor, it’s much like how one would hold pebbles: they may move around and become harmed, intentionally or no, but they will not slip through the palms like water would.”

“So, you’re saying that my DNA essentially went ‘fuck this dude’ and turned the extra forty percent of my body into liquid.”

“Not at all—”

“I don’t think that’s possible!” the other voice chimes from above. “Don’t worry, you’re still a physical person, it’s just that…well, you had some bad timing, I’d say!”

“What she means,” the eyes continue, “is that you seemed to have stepped through a break during a temporal tremor.”

“A what?” you ask.

“A temporal tremor.” Some of the eyes blink, the others holding their steady gaze. “They happen quite frequently, but they’re often so minuscule that one would hardly notice them occurring. Just as well, there are fault lines along the earth—much like those that contribute to earthquakes—that contribute to the displacement of time.”

“Like she said, they’re usually pretty small—but if there’s a big one and you step right into the fault, well…” 

The ripples begin again, at which you stumble and the violet eyes glare at an undistinguished location in warning.

“Witch,” the eyes hush. “You’re going to fling him into some other unknown if you keep jolting like that.”

“Sorry, Seer,” the witch hushes back, smile behind her voice, “it’s just kind of funny!”

“I fail to see how this it at all amusing,” the seer murmurs. 

You wonder if they know you can hear them.

“He just had the _worst_ possible timing! It’s almost unheard of—this hasn’t happened in a long, lo-o-o-ong time, you know.”

“I know.”

You breathe slowly.

“What happened?” you ask, and you watch the eyes turn their attention back to you, feel the ripples return to the surface. 

“I apologize for her behavior,” the seer—the eyes, you don’t know—says, “but I will admit that it’s incredibly rare that this happened to you.”

“You stepped _right_ into a fault when a big tremor hit,” the witch explains. 

“I walked into my bathroom,” you respond.

“Oh, they’re everywhere!”

“If they’re everywhere, then how is it so rare?” you volley.

“Because you need to get the timing _just right_ to slip through.” The ripples return to the ground again, causing you to curl your toes harshly. “The tremors don’t last very long—and they’re usually so-o-o teeny-tiny that even if you _did_ step into a fault while one was happening, nothing would happen, except maybe leaving you feeling kind of disoriented for a second.” 

You try to think of ever feeling disoriented while trying to take a piss before dismissing the question quickly and altogether. 

“Instead, I ended up in limbo,” you say.

“You ended _under_. You managed to get caught up in a huge tremor at the precise moment that you walked into the fault.” When she giggles, you brace yourself as the waves roll through. “It’s almost incredible!”

The violet eyes remain on you as you run a hand thickly through your hair. 

“Under,” you repeat.

“Yes.” The eyes blink slowly, the brief moment of darkness making your chest ache. “To be frank, you are still on earth, and yet you are not. You are just under from where you were a moment ago, and yet you are incredibly far away—an entirely different universe away, we believe.”

You move to respond, but nothing comes out. You swallow instead.

“It’s quite complicated,” the seer continues, “even we have a difficult time understanding it. It’s not really supposed to exist.”

“Yeah…” The witch sighs, leaving you to sit on the surface. “Space is tricky sometimes—sometimes the planets and universes just align and behave like they should! But other times the energy gets all messed up, like there’s an imbalance.”

“We believe that your planet had a substantial amount of unused and misplaced energy. As a result, it created the under—not quite a complete parallel universe on its own, but not quite a natural part of your earth, either.”

Their words float onto you, but not all of them stick around long enough for you to comprehend. 

Let’s be honest, you have no fucking clue what they’re talking about. You’re too scrambled to even begin to understand or believe.

“So,” you start, mouth dry, “am I stuck here or what?”

The eyes flicker for a moment—pity, you think automatically. “Oh, no, not necessarily.”

“Not necessarily,” you repeat.

“Though rare, this has happened before. It really is all a matter of un-slipping.”

You pinch the bridge of your nose, heaving a sigh. This is all getting to be way too much. A headache begins to pound in your temples. 

“So how the fuck do I ‘un-slip’ or whatever,” you ask. 

“Well, you can wait for the next huge tremor, which may be another few hundred years—”

“Yeah, I’ll pass.”

“Let me explain.” The eyes narrow slightly to scold you. “You may wait until then, _or_ you may get pulled back through the Witch’s hand—go back the way you came, if you will.” 

“Alright, and this Witch’s hand business, do I need to go on an epic faux-blind journey to _find_ this thing, or what?”

The witch laughs. “No, silly, you’re sitting on it! This is _my_ hand!”

The ripples begin again, but in slow deep waves, bobbing you gently. You clutch at the surface briefly.

“So all this seasickness-simulator b-s is your doing, then,” you say flatly, at which she laughs again.

“Sorry! I know you can’t tell, but you’re practically wedged between individual cells—without Seer, I can’t even see you! I can hardly feel you there.”

“I suppose I _do_ have impeccable eyesight,” the seer says, “although I believe it only comes with the title.”

“Nasty,” you murmur. “So I just need to get pulled back through? Just like that?”

“Mm,” the witch hums, “ _kind_ of. Without the tremor affecting the fault so much, it would be really difficult for anyone on the other side to just reach in all willy-nilly and pull you out. Not only would they have to find a very specific location in the break, but it would then have to be artificially tampered with just enough to get you out.”

“Alright, and how would I go about that?”

Some silence hangs in the nothing. The eyes blink slowly again. 

“It has the potential to be dangerous,” the seer warns after some deliberation. “While we don’t know that these outcomes may occur, I can only imagine that creating an artificial break may cause significant memory loss, permanent disorientation—”

“Hold up, I thought you said this has been done before.”

“It has.”

“So what’s the deal?” You look directly into one of the eyes, feeling your own grow sore with a glare. “Like, as much as I would love to go through the whole caution list, I really just want to go home. I’ve got this dumbass waiting for me to tuck him in and read him his bedtime stories and shit.”

“A child?” the witch chimes.

“Yeah, my twenty-five year old son all swaddled up in a blanket drooling over a binky and a pack of menthols,” you respond. You continue before either can ask: “It also sounds like he’s my only ticket out of here, but it’s not like the dude just hangs out in the bathroom all day waiting for temporal-whatevers to open up. So tell me what I have to do to open up this break so I can squirm out and get on with myself.”

“It’s not that simple,” the seer says. “While this has happened before, those who were able to un-slip harbored unnatural abilities in relation to time itself. I would find it hard-pressed to believe that _another_ has appeared again so soon—”

“What kind of abilities? Like, time-travelling and kickin’ it with George Washington whenever they damn pleased?”

“Maybe!” the witch says. “This one lady said that the reason why she was so good at finding fossils was because she could go back in time to see exactly when and where the animals died. I didn’t believe her, but she was able to un-slip pretty easily!”

“She was an interesting case, if only due to her insistence that she uses these powers for occupational reasons only,” the seer adds.

“Have you ever done anything like that, though?” You can tell the witch directs the question you as a wave bobs you suddenly.

You cross your arms loosely over your ribs with a short huff.

“Yeah, I have this side-hobby of just hanging back with my man JFK before his final moments, just sitting around with some presidential milkshakes and giving him the grand tour of Texas while I toy around with the knowledge that some dudes with guns are waiting around for him, and I go back to this moment fifty times over wondering, hey, maybe I should tell the guy, but ultimately who am I to alter that shit? God or something? So maybe I should just let him enjoy his shake and just let things be, right?”

The eyes roll slowly. 

“I’m going to take your response as a no, you’ve never experienced any unnatural time abilities.”

You shrug. “Can’t say I have. Also can’t say that I’ve ever tried.”

“Do you think you could?” the witch asks. “It wouldn’t hurt to try!”

“I mean, I guess I can take a swing at it.” You swipe your palms over your thighs, trying to rid of the last dregs of clammy sweat. “How does this even work, I just wave a magic wand and fairy-godmother myself to where I want?”

The eyes squint in thought. “I’m unsure if there’s only one way to go about these things. I would imagine that there would be many different ways to achieve some semblance of the same goal—it may be a matter of personal taste.”

“Maybe try closing your eyes and focusing?” the witch suggests. “Like, just visualizing where you would want to go, I guess!”

“Cool.” A pause, you quietly coming to the realization that you’re actually going to try time-travelling like you’re a lame thirteen year old again. “Alright.”

As you settle into a cross-legged position over a bobbing wave, you close your eyes lightly. Something in you says that this won’t work, that it would be pretty stupid to expect that after all this time, you just had some unlocked potential. Sure, you’ve always had the innate ability to accurately tell the time, but for the most part you think they’ve all been lucky guesses. 

If it is a dumb power, you mostly just resent it anyway. You can never just chill and let the days pass.

Before settling fully, before creating a memory in your mind, you peer at the eyes staring down at you with a half-open glance. 

“Do you think I could just visualize the future and skip all this weird under jazz? All the cool time travelers get to go into the future.”

“I highly doubt that you would be able to do that.” The eyes squint gently. “It’s already quite unlikely that you’re able to go into the past, much less to points in time that you are unfamiliar with.”

“Killing my dreams, here,” you respond. You close your eyes fully again. “But maybe I’ll blow your mind.”

The voices go quiet in their patience. 

Visualize a moment. Easy enough.

You think back to yesterday, when the sun was hitting the living room windows squarely, the way sunsets at seven fifty-seven in the August evenings do. The sun, hitting the windows warmly, catching dust in the beams; John, leaping up from the couch to swipe at the television, leaving long steaking handprints amidst the grime fuzzing the picture.

Experimentally, you peel an eye open—

“Not yet,” the seer murmurs. 

You close it with a soft sigh.

The sun, the dust, the large handprints on the television, John batting his hand against his jeans to shake off the dirt smeared into his palm. He pads across the carpet—dingy and brown, peppered with orange dust from neglected and stepped-on snacks—back to the couch, still blue, still sinking in all the wrong spots.

When he sits next to you, his arm brushes yours just briefly, but already his skin has soaked in the heat of the sun. 

You feel a lump form in your throat, present-tense. Yesterday, you had only nudged his arm back in retaliation, at which he shoved back with a “hey” tumbling out of him as a breathy laugh. 

He speaks in your mind—“Should we watch _Prometheus_ or _War of the Worlds_?”—but his voice isn’t fully there. It never is, when you try recalling it; there’s always something missing, the balance of breathiness and weight, the practiced work around his overbite, the motivation behind his thoughts that creates a flux in inflections that you could never replicate. 

His voice is too close to yours when you try to remember it exactly. When you remember your response—“I know that the _Alien_ franchise gets your dick wet, so I can’t knowingly deny a bro some solid fantasy material when I have such incriminating information floating around my frontal lobe”—it hardly sounds any different. 

You feel your brows pinch at the realization. Slowly, you open your eyes. 

“Hm,” the seer hums, “I don’t believe he can do it.”

“I think he should keep trying!” the witch starts, then, to you, “You should keep going—you’re not gonna figure it out in five minutes!”

“Alright, alright,” you respond. You reach up to rub small circles into your temples. “Just give me a sec’.”

The two fall silent again, and you look away from the multiple eyes on you. When you close your eyes, you bring yourself up to speed.

Sunlight, dust, the smudged television, John’s hands, John sitting beside you, John radiating heat from his skin bumping yours. A stupid question, a stupid response.

You remember him getting up again, kneeling in front of the cabinet below the television. He tosses your video games to the side to access some of his stowed-away movies and, with his back to you, asks, “You wanna order out?” in the voice that isn’t really his.

“Sure, man,” you respond. You dig your phone from your pocket as you splay yourself to lie across the couch, your legs finding purpose in taking his seat. “Pad Thai?”

“Nah, not again.” He crouches down lower to look in deeper, voice becoming muffled by the walls of the cabinet. “Let’s just do pizza or something.”

“Word.” You start tapping away at your phone, but out of the corner of your eye, you watch him struggle, broad shoulders versus the narrow cabinet. “You sure you put the movie in there?”

“Yeah, I—” He stops with a _thunk_ and a hiss, having knocked the back of his head against the shelf. “ _Ouch_ —yeah, I’m pretty sure I put it in here. It’s where all the quick-grabs are!”

You bring your eyes back to your phone briefly. “Check your room, dude, you probably left it in there after another much-needed alien jerkoff sesh.”

He pulls himself out of the cabinet with a sigh, and when you glance at him again, his cheeks are flushed. 

“You’re gross,” he says.

“I dunno, I’m just saying,” you start, looking between typing in your order and back at him, “I’m not the one that has a thing for alien horror movies.”

At that, he rolls his eyes, getting to his feet and nudging the pile of video games and DVDs to the side with the edge of his foot. “They’re not horror movies, Dave, you’re just a weenie.”

You set the order and drop your phone into your lap as he starts to round the couch. 

“Fine, I admit it,” you call to him when you hear him shuffling in his bedroom, “I’m a huge turd baby that can’t handle horror movies, and I need John Egbert’s strong arms to keep me from pissing myself.”

“Gay,” he calls back nonchalantly. 

You let yourself smirk. 

“Right, I need your strong arms, some Xanax, and about fifty dollars.”

He barks a laugh. “Fifty dollars?”

“Yeah, you know, funny story, there was this dude who stopped me in an alley, we may or may not have made some transactions where—”

“Ah! Found it!” 

He bounds back with heavy, quick footsteps, and he busies himself with setting up the movie while you keep your eyes on his back. 

“I told you,” you say. He half-heartedly tosses the bird over his shoulder before getting the movie to start. When he gets up, you snap your legs back to open his seat, only to promptly trap him as soon as he sits. 

“Da-a-a-ve,” he complains. 

“Rude, the movie’s starting.”

He settles his arms over your calves with a defeated sigh, sinking back into the cushions comfortably. The heat from the sun has escaped him, you’re sure, but still, the dude never failed to be anything less than a walking, talking radiator. 

You let him hold your legs to his own. Behind your shades, you pretend to pay attention, but instead you watch the reflection of colors dance on his glasses. You watch his eyes regain some spark despite knowing the film word-for-word, shot-for-shot. As the warmth of the sunset sinks, submerging the living room into a cooled blue, you look back at the television. 

The smeared handprints have all but disappeared. 

You do try to hold some attention to the movie—if only to prove to John that the lame jump-scares didn’t get under your skin anymore—but you become acutely distracted each time his fingers toy with the hem of your pants, when he mindlessly clutches at your legs, and, once the food arrives, when he deftly attempts to smear his greasy fingerprints into your jeans, acting as if you won’t notice. (You do, and you stroke a heavily greased finger down his cheek and into his stubble to make him stop). (He doesn’t stop). 

Sometimes his hands brush against your exposed ankles, rubbing indiscriminate little circles into your skin with his thumbs. The action makes your skin buzz, full-body, just under the surface.

You realize you can feel your heart thrumming, present-tense, past-tense; you can feel your cheeks and ears heating up, present-tense, past-tense. You remember turning your head away to subdue a smirk into your hand—

A flicker.

Then, blurry, and from afar, you watch yourself turn away to subdue a smirk into your hand. 

You watch him turn his head to look at you beside him.

Somewhere behind the couch, in the quick-darkened corner of the living room, you straighten your knees, bracing for the unforgiving waves of the under, instead finding refuge in the shitty brown carpet of your apartment.

Your apartment.

John opens his mouth to speak—

“Dude, you’re not going to hide behind your hands again, are you?”

You squint at his words. They don’t come so easily to you now— they fall rounded and muffled onto your ears. Still, you know you respond, and you watch as you shift minutely in your spot, saying,

“I don’t know man, this part gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

He laughs—rounded, wrong, not your imitating laugh in memory but not his real laugh, either. 

“You can do it, you’ve seen this part a million times before.”

You move to step closer, wanting to hear the words clearly, wanting to remind your bogus memory of how his voice really sounds, but instead the view falls away with static and white noise.

Another flicker. You quickly find yourself in the under once more, rows and rows of violet eyes staring down at you in mild surprise while the hand beneath you knocks you to your knees again with its waves.

“I think he did it!” the voice above chimes, and, good god fucking almighty, you might have done it. Did you? You hold your head in your hands to quell the feeling of disorientation sinking into your blood.

“I saw him,” you start, “us. I saw us.”

“Was it familiar?” the eyes ask. You’re silent for a moment, trying to straighten your whirred thoughts.

“Yeah, it was—it was just yesterday, like we were just chilling, you know?” 

You feel the last quick thumps of your heart settle down into a normal beat. You still feel slightly breathless.

“Did you engage in the scene?” the seer asks. “Did you say anything?”

“Geez, I didn’t even have the time to do anything. It happened kinda fast.”

She hums shortly. The eyes look up, unblinking, at the endless dark above you, in a moment of deliberation before settling back onto you.

“Was there anything out of the ordinary?” she continues. “Anything that doesn’t comply with how you remember the event?”

“It was blurry,” you admit, finding your voice again as the disorientation soothes and mellows, “like nothing was totally clear. And even though I knew exactly what we were saying, it was all muffled and fucked up. I tried to get closer to hear him, but—”

“Is that when you came back here?” the witch asks.

You nod. “Yeah, just got ripped out of there as soon as I moved.”

The seer hums shortly again, and the other parrots the noise. They return to a quiet conversation, and you wonder, still, if they don’t know that you can hear them.

“I mean, he _did_ do it, Seer.”

“Only for a very brief moment—it was mere seconds.”

“So? He still did it!”

“We cannot concretely say that he did. We still don’t know much about this place; it may have had a fit of other-worldliness and blotted him from my sight for a moment.”

“But he’s _saying_ that—”

“Regardless, it may have been a foggy memory.”

The witch huffs. You settle your hands onto your knees.

“I think I heard him before,” you say, grabbing their attention. The eyes snap back to you. “Like, before you guys were here.”

“Oh?” the seer queries. “As in, he was trying to contact you?”

“Maybe. I mean, I think my shades sort of dropped back to him, and they were clattering around and shit.” You shrug lamely. “He probably thought I just dropped them and bailed.”

“‘Dropped back’?” the witch repeats, hope inflecting her voice. 

“Yeah, I had them with me when I slipped into this mess, but—”

“I _knew_ it!” she says, and the eyes look up away from you in a surprised flash. “Seer, he can do it!”

“That is entirely inconsequential,” the other tries to soothe, “they very well may have dropped through when the tremor was still occurring. I mean, such a small object may not have a difficult time slipping through—”

“Oh, come on, stop being such a spoil-sport!” 

“Witch, we can’t just make assumptions like this, and you know that.”

The ground wobbles with a sharp wave as a scoff rings above you. “Did you do anything when you lost your shades?” the witch directs to you. “Like, were you hitting the ground screaming?”

“Well, yeah,” you respond. “I was trying to get the dude’s attention.”

“Like, hitting it _really, really_ hard?”

“As hard as I could, sure. And clearly I’m a ripped dude, I’m surprised I didn’t break your hand.”

At that, she laughs, breaking some of the tension. “I thought I felt a tickle—that’s why we came to investigate—but that’s perfect! You might have created an artificial break!”

The eyes move harshly to look above. “Witch, please think about this—”

“Uh, no duh I’m thinking about it. Seer, we have proof! He can go back like the others instead of waiting around here until he’s a pile of bones.”

“We don’t even know what would happen to someone _should_ they be trapped down here for such a prolonged period of time,” the seer mutters. 

“Yeah, because only _time people_ have slipped through. Why would he be an exception?”

“Because this is still incredibly new to us, and there hasn’t been nearly enough occurrences to warrant saying that there will never be an exception—”

“But, _look_.” The waves roll under your legs again. “He time-travelled, he made his shades slip back through, he probably made an _artificial fault_ for god’s sake! We have the proof right in front of us!”

The eyes blink slowly. “I would only be able to believe it if he can perform the break again. Should he have these abilities, as rare as I still believe that may be, then creating the break should be no problem.”

“So, I just throw another tantrum?” you ask. “Like, toddler being denied candy at the checkout line, that sort of deal?”

“Right—but hold on a second,” the witch says. “It’s probably gonna be harder to do this time, since the tremor’s totally passed. That, and you need to be in the exact spot that you were in when you first did it, since that’s where the fault is.”

“Oh sure, let me just find the marker that I left,” you chide. “If you haven’t noticed, it’s pitch black here. I can’t see a damn thing aside from two hundred eyes staring at me.”

“From what I can gather,” the seer starts, “you need to move a touch forward. I believe you only moved once you came back from your travel.”

“Hah! So you _do_ admit that he did it!” 

“I’m merely beginning to entertain the idea. It would be sluggish of me to ignore the possibility if he’s going to make an attempt to un-slip.”

You crawl forward on your hands and knees until the seer prompts you to stop.

“Alright,” you start, “so do I just have at it? Let out my frustrations like a hormonal teenager again? That could be a pretty dangerous headspace, are you sure you wanna see—”

“We should wait for another tremor,” the seer interrupts. Before you can respond, she explains, “A small one, that is. Again, miniscule tremors happen very frequently, but I do believe it would aid a touch in trying to create a break.”

“Are we talking frequently like, every few minutes, or _your_ version of frequently, which is probably like, every thirty years or something?”

“Every few minutes,” she assures.

“Cool.”

You sit quietly, running a hand slowly over the slicked ground. They go silent, too, the violet eyes looking around in waiting. 

“So,” you start, “are you guys like, gods or something? Like some Greek myth kind of business?”

“Somewhat,” the seer responds—you watch the eyes’ lower lids crinkle gently—“though I suppose from your universe’s perspective, yes.”

“How’d you end up with that sweet deal?”

“Oh, we caused a bit of trouble quite a while back.” The eyes gleam slightly, as if in a smirk. “It was an ordeal.”

The witch, you realize, has gone silent, and the waves have stilled near completely.

“She’s concentrating,” the seer answers. 

You didn’t even ask.

Some moments later, the witch speaks up with a succession of small waves, telling you a tremor is about to occur in three, two—

You ready a fist and hit the ground as hard as you can with the side of your hand, a rapid chain of waves bouncing under you as you disrupt the under. You hit it again, calling John’s name, but ultimately come from the passing of the tremor empty-handed. 

You sit back on your heels once the waves have settled.

“He didn’t hear me,” you say. 

You remember that the moon had been hanging high above your apartment before you slipped into the under. With a scoff, you say, “Shit, Egbert might actually be asleep.”

“Oh, dear,” the seer murmurs. “Is he not someone who concerns himself over the sudden disappearance of his beau? That seems rather irresponsible.”

You quirk a brow lightly at the eyes. “Oh yeah, he’s real cold-hearted.” Then, swiping a hand through your hair, “Nah, we were up late. For all I know he doesn’t even realize he passed out. I’m sure he’s already poured one out his lost bro, even went around town putting up missing posters. Maybe he went to the trouble of reinstating the missing-children milk carton program, but that might be some passive-aggressive dig at me for taking his all the time.”

They go quiet. You shrug. 

“It’s weird, actually,” you continue, “because I feel like I’m pretty good at guessing the time. I don’t really carry around watches or check my phone and all the jazz because, you know, why bother. But I couldn’t tell you the time right now if the world depended on it.”

“Well, this isn’t quite your universe,” the seer reminds you, “and while I don’t believe time is passing any differently down here than it is on earth, I cannot confirm that the time is exactly the same.” The eyes blink slowly. “Telling us of your innate time-telling may have been useful, however.”

“I don’t think it’s anything special, they’re just, you know.” You wave a hand vaguely. “Lucky guesses.”

“Wait, you don’t think you have any abilities?” the witch chimes, breaking her concentration momentarily and sending another short ripple through the surface. 

“That’s a pretty loaded question. I didn’t know this kind of shit was even possible.”

“Well…do you believe in them now?”

“I don’t know man, I’m still not even sure this whole under business is actually happening—isn’t this the kind of stuff that coma patients go through? Like mad hallucinations and all that?”

“I wouldn’t know,” the seer responds, “I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced being comatose first-hand.”

“Well, whatever this is, I just want to get home. Whether that means waking up or actually crawling through some weird-ass fault line.”

A ripple bobs under you as the witch moves to respond, but she’s quickly silenced as your hand shoots up to quiet her.

On the other side of the surface, you think you can hear something.

“Oh, shoot, the tremor—”

“Shh,” you hush. You lean down to press and ear to the ground, listening carefully.

You hear the footsteps creep under you. Footsteps, a muffled _clank_ of plastic hitting porcelain, a tired hum.

“Shit,” you breathe. Then, slamming a hand against the ground, waves returning, you yell, “John!”

The noise stops briefly. You slap the ground open-palmed again, raising your voice, “Egbert, it’s me.”

“Dave?”

Fucking finally. You intake a sharp breathe, then respond, “Yeah, it’s me, listen you gotta—”

You hear the shuffle of footsteps, the far-away rustling of his jeans. “Where are you?”

“What? Uh, geez, I’m right under you—listen, I—”

“Dave?”

“John?” You hit your hand against the ground again. “No, Jesus, come on, Egbert.”

You’re met with silence on the other side.

“The tremor passed,” the witch says. “But you made contact!”

You sigh sharply from your nose. “The dude better not leave me here—Christ.” You look up before looking away again, finding the harsh darkness unsettling. “When’s the next tremor?”

“Mm, probably soon.” She goes silent in concentration for a short moment again before saying, “Maybe you should, I don’t know, explain to him what’s going on faster? There’s not much time for him to pull you through, and at this rate you _are_ going to be here for a hundred years!”

“What, tell twenty questions over there to reach in and grab me? I’ll spend the next millennium just getting past all the ‘whys’ and then another thousand years just getting through all the ‘hows’, and _then_ maybe he’ll get around to saying, ‘sure man, also we’re totally a pile of bones now, isn’t that cool?’”

“I suggest explaining things during the next tremor, and then having him pull you out in the one thereafter.” The eyes flicker up to look at where you assume the witch is. “Do you sense any slightly larger-than-usual tremors passing through?”

“I can’t tell right now,” the witch responds. “If we get really lucky, maybe.”

Silence falls over the under again. You pull at the corners of your nails before you feel the now-familiar ripples roll under your knees. 

“Okay,” the witch says, “here’s another!”

You hit the ground—your skin is beginning to warm with the sting—to get his attention. “John?”

The sound comes to you quickly, and you would feel relieved if it wasn’t a heavy sigh.

“Dave, I’m trying to piss.”

“What?” you ask, leaning closer to the surface in hopes that your voice will carry through. “Oh, sick, come on man—I don’t have much time, you can piss later.”

The rustling of jeans, another muffled sigh. 

“It’s hard to hear you.”

“John,” you say, raising your voice and slowing your words, “I need you to not ask any bullshit questions for the next like, ten minutes. I’m going to disappear or something again, but I’ll be back, okay?”

“What?” You hear his voice near—you imagine him crouching low to the tiles, his thick brows drawn in tired confusion. “Are you under the—”

“I’m just _under_ , okay? I’ll explain everything later, just—”

“Dave? Come on, dude...”

“Shit,” you murmur. Everything goes silent once more.

“Sorry,” the witch says, “the next one, maybe.”

You sit on your heels and tap the side of your knees impatiently, waiting for the telltale ripples to send you slamming your stinging fist against the ground again. The seer says nothing—she watches on patiently, staring at you. 

When the ripples begin, you don’t let the witch speak. You immediately send a swift hit to the ground, getting a tired yelp in response.

“Dave! What the hell!”

You feel your breath catch for a moment, realizing the slight change in clarity, but you stifle the feeling and raise your voice instead.

“John, there’s no time—stick your fucking hand in the floor or so help me god—”

“Wha—geez, why? What’s going on, where _are_ you?”

“Can you just play along now and ask questions later?” 

“Are you trying to mess with me? Seriously, what’s going on?”

You grit your teeth, pressing a hand firmly into the surface. It feels slick and cold against your anxious skin. “Egbert, just—reach your hand towards my voice, would you?”

“Did you piss on the floor? Gross, man, you’re not going to get me like that—”

“No, because I’m not you, dude. Listen, I’m not fucking with you right now, I just need you to hear me out—”

“Did you get the neighbors to do this? Like, geez, I’m sorry about the whole juice thing, I know it’s an old and stupid joke but I didn’t think—”

“ _John_ ,” you snap, before quickly collecting your fraying wits, “would you just shut up and get me?” 

“You better hurry,” the witch says from above, “the tremor’s starting to dip. You should start trying to make a break!”

“Okay,” you breathe. Then, louder, “John, just trust me, okay? I’m not fucking around—I’m going to beat the shit out of the floor and _you’re_ going to get your feelers all into the nasty bathroom grout and pull me out.”

“What? How will I—”

“Just be a good bro and _do it_.”

With some finality, you start to hit the ground again, closed-fisted, listening to him jump back as the waves roll under and away, carrying the thick _thumps_ on their crests. You can’t hear if he starts padding the ground looking for the break, you don’t even know if he’s trying, but the longer you hit the surface and feel the nothing quake under you, the more you pray for something to _give_ , for this to just fucking work—

You see the eyes shift in your peripherals, a succession of slow blinking. 

“Come on, John,” you mutter, driving the heels of your palms into the dark. “Just do me a solid and do this for me.”

You continue for another long moment—a second, a minute, it doesn’t really matter down here—muttering curses behind your teeth. It’s when you inhale and drive your palm down one more time that you finally feel something give, a slip in the surface. For a moment you’re afraid it’s you, the tiny wrist bones turning to dust or your fingers getting obliterated, but you don’t feel pain when a hand touches yours and you instinctively flinch away. 

Quickly, you rush your hand back. 

“John,” you prompt. 

“Dave,” John says, crystal clear, panicked, “oh my god, what is—”

You suck in a breath before catching his hand—warm and calloused, gripping you tightly back at first with one hand and then the other, grasping your forearm. 

“Go quickly,” the witch prompts, “and try not to slip under again!”

The voice carries over you, and you feel one last bob in the cold surface before everything goes still. 

You give once last look at the under. The eyes begin to blink away and submit to the dark, leaving you with only two violet irises staring you down. 

“Go,” the seer says. The eyes crinkle in what you can only imagine is a hidden smile that you'll never see. “Please be safe, Dave.”

You don’t have the chance to say anything in return before the eyes disappear, leaving you in brief darkness before John pulls

you’re on the bathroom floor, back against the cool tile, breathing deep to settle your heart thrumming into your throat. The lights make you squint, though your eyes don’t hurt much past a gentle sting, and as you turn your head you refamiliarize yourself with the dusty molding, the tacky green wallpaper peeling from the walls from decades of humidity, the years-old hot pink bathmat crinkled and worn at the edge of the bath. You splay your hands, feeling the unwashed grime of the floor, feeling out the difference between the ceramic and the grout with your fingertips. 

Jesus, you think.

You’re home.

You sit up slowly onto your elbows, realizing the soreness in your hands. John sits on his knees at your feet. His eyes worry themselves over you.

“Dave,” he breathes, “what just happened?”

When you look at him, you notice the drooping dark under his eyes, the blue squint of nearsightedness, his brows drawn in a way that you only see when he wakes up from his strange reoccurring dreams. He reaches out to squeeze your calf softly, then crawls to meet you halfway as you sit up fully. You wince as a dizzy spell swims behind your eyes. 

“Dave?”

“Yeah,” you croak. 

“Let’s, uh.” He licks his lips before trying a tired half-smile. “Let’s get out of the bathroom. I never realized how nasty it is in here.”

You nod a little, and he helps you up, large hands under your pits as you maneuver your legs under you. Standing makes stars form in your vision; he wraps a strong arm around your middle after flicking the light off. 

It’s nice to feel the scratchy carpet under your feet again.

The trek back to the couch is slow. You don’t ask him why you don’t just settle into your own beds, because when he settles you down into the worn cushions, your bones nearly melt. He sits himself carefully next to you in the colored light of the television. You hear the clatter of your shades hit the coffee table, but you don’t open your eyes to look at them. 

Instead, you turn your head to nestle your face into the cushion, feeling the button roll uncomfortably, familiarly against your cheekbone. As you inhale deeply, you can smell the fresh layer of menthol momentarily overriding the stale smoke that you’re convinced makes up almost eighty percent of the couch.

He moves to pull your legs over his lap. Instead, you nudge his outer thigh with your heel. You mumble into the cushion,

“Were you smoking while I was gone?”

He laughs—tired, breathy, nervous—“Heh, yeah.”

Silence. You slump as he runs nervous hands over your shins. 

“Um,” he starts, his voice—god, now that you hear it, how the fuck did you manage to forget it—pulling you from your descent into exhaustion. “What was—like, how did any of that—where _were_ you?”

You sigh slowly through your nose. When you inhale, you bury your nose into the couch again, smelling the momentary freshness of his bad habit before it would inevitably turn musty and forgotten. 

“Dude,” you begin, “I’d love to tell you right now, but I don’t even know. I’ve gotta sleep on it, alright man?”

“What!” You peer at him with an eye and watch him wince at his own volume. “Sorry, but— _what?_ I thought you were just fucking with me, but then I pulled you _out_ from the floor, and you were—like, I’m not sure—”

You silence him when you squirm up enough to grasp his upper arm, tugging on it as you lie down again. He reluctantly follows, but soon he’s behind the curve of your back, an arm draped awkwardly over your middle. 

“Egbert, I’ve gotta get my naptime on. For real.”

He practically sputters into your ear.

“You’re not gonna tell me what that was even about? I almost peed myself!”

“Gross, dude, didn’t know you still wet your pants. Need to go back to pre-k?”

You subdue a laugh when he makes defensive noises into the shell of your ear.

As he continues to mumble questions into your hair, you close your eyes fully, letting the television make light dance through your eyelids. Maybe the box had been muted; you can only hear his murmurs floating over you, can only feel the baby hairs on your neck shift and sway when he breathes. The longer you keep your eyes closed, the more acutely you can feel him toy with your shirt hem between his fingertips, nudge his knees into the curve of yours, press his mouth in bouts of silence against your shoulder. 

The dip into sleep leads you into the dark again, but not to the cold surface of the under, the chill of violet eyes or bobbing waves. You breathe in slowly—John’s body heat crawling to your lungs, his words gradually becoming the drawn-out gentle snores that you expected to become of them. 

You wonder if you’ll remember the under in the morning. 

You wonder what you’ll say to him if you do.

But for now, he is asleep on the sunken blue couch, belly breathing slow and deep against your spine; the television flickers colorful infomercials onto the walls, and the air conditioner clackers away in the corner window as an afterthought. 

The under is away. The under is gone and away, as near or far as you can imagine it to be. You are home in the white-noise normalcy of morning hours and the dark blue sky creeping through the windowpanes. 

You squint at the neon green blur of numbers across the room before letting yourself sink fully into sleep.

It’s almost quarter after four in the morning. 

**Author's Note:**

> anyways i binged stranger things in one day just like everyone else.
> 
> listened to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GbDa2UnAO4) a lot.
> 
> hmu @ spacepuck.tumblr.com


End file.
